Taken for Granite

By Juno Wells

A gargoyle imprisoned.

Captured, starved and blinded, Tas hates humans. For eighty agonizing years, he’s plotted all the gruesome ways to exact his vengeance. Then one day his captors make a fatal mistake. When the door to his cage opens, he’s ready to destroy the human on the other side.

But a different instinct takes over when he scents the female. His mouth waters and his fangs ache, demanding he make the fearless female his.

A single mom, desperate to save her kid.

Juniper owes a lot of money to a very bad man and unless she does what he wants, he’ll hurt her kid.

To clear her debt, all she has to do is drive a van and not ask questions. But when she hears a voice in the back, she realizes she may not only be a thief but also a kidnapper, and that’s where she draws the line.

What she finds in the back isn’t the loot she expected, but it also isn’t a person.

It’s a gargoyle... who intends to claim her as his mate.

_______
Taken for Granite is a standalone novel in the collaborative series the Khargals of Duras, featuring a grumpy gargoyle and an HEA.

A thousand years ago, a Khargal scouting party left Duras, only to crash on a planet called Earth.

Injured and outnumbered, the stranded Khargals hid among stone effigies and observed the slow evolution of the planet’s primitive inhabitants. With no means of returning to Duras, they watched from their shadowy perches and faded into legend, becoming the mythical gargoyles.

Until today. Long after any hope for rescue had died, the distress signal has finally been answered.

It’s time to go home.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Menura Press
• Release date: May 24, 2019
• ISBN: 9781370892280

Book preview

1

Tas

Bits of conversation drifted into his cell. Tas shifted, listening carefully to the hushed voices. Something had happened. His captors planned to move him to another facility, this one in America.

The voices grew louder as they approached his cell.

Moving day. On your feet, Creature. An unseen male yanked on Tas’ chain, forcing him to his feet unless he wanted to be strangled by the slip chain.

Tas lunged forward, his claws catching the male by the arm.

Foolish human.

Tas reveled in the satisfying scream of pain and panic, the warmth of blood on his claws, before the familiar prick of a sedative dart hit him in the neck. Just as the darkness took him, Tas felt the ping of his sigil.

Someone had activated the rescue beacon.

Tas woke, his head foggy and limbs heavy as stone.

Salt permeated the air. The sounds of machinery surrounded him. The floor rolled with barely perceivable motion. He believed his captors had transported him in the cargo hold of a ship.

Waking in an unfamiliar environment was not a new experience. His captors, the Rose Syndicate, often sedated him before moving him to a new location. They understood that if Tas had the chance, he’d tear their throats out with his fangs, crooning a song of happiness.

He crooned now, just to hear the sound bounce back. He mapped out the interior, finding every dent and ding in the surface. From the way the sound waves bounced back, he knew the crate to be constructed of wood with steel bars reinforcing the sides.

Tas tested the manacles at his wrists, and found them loose enough to slip free. He could smash the crate to splinters and free himself, but to what end? He’d be on a ship in the middle of the ocean.

He had experienced Earth’s cold ocean once. With clarity, he recalled how the Khargal ship sank, and water poured in. Shifted in his stone form to survive the impact, the weight of that form dragged him down. He struggled to reach the surface, and many of his fellow soldiers drowned.

Never again.

His sigil sent a gentle ping. That was a new experience, so new he hesitated at how to process the information. The sigil, a communication device, had a message. For the first time in one thousand years, a gracking message.

He could sense its location and the distance between him and the device. It might as well have been on the other side of this abysmal planet. He needed to retrieve the device, to read the message and discover if rescue came at last, but Tas felt the weight of the chains binding him and he had to exercise patience.

Instead, he analyzed the snatches of conversation he overheard before being knocked out.

Something happened. They were nervous.

Tas absently chewed on the iron chains binding his wrists, the metallic taste saturating his tongue. Whatever nutrients his body could get from gnawing at the chains, he’d take them. After decades under the care of the Rose Syndicate, he was intimately familiar with humiliation and its companion, degradation. They were the favored tools of his captors.

He pushed thoughts of humiliation and degradation out of his mind and focused on vengeance, particularly the satisfying cries of the last male he injured. Cocky and foolish, the male underestimated Tas. If his captors insisted on calling Tas a creature, he’d act like one.

Fantasies of vengeance fed his will to live but they did not feed his body. Tas continued to gnaw at the chains. Kept on the brink of starvation by his captors, he needed raw minerals to not only take off the sharp edge of hunger but to regain his strength. With enough fuel ingested, his body could repair its injuries, no matter how long ago they may have been inflicted.

He rolled his shoulders. His captors had not bothered to bind his wings as they hung uselessly behind him, and he knew exactly who had issued that order. After all, how far could a soldier get on broken wings?

Agent Rhododendron had been his handler for the last few years. The female proved adept at delivering a new level of degradation and insult beyond the standard pain. Failing to truss him properly spoke to Tas being a non-threat. Rhododendron wounded him more keenly than any knife.

Tas stretched and flexed his legs, the chain connecting his wrist cuffs to his feet rattling. Unfettered, his tail swept behind him, brushing along the wooden crate.

He wouldn’t have to get far, as he intended to use the chain to strangle the first human he saw.

Saw. Ha. Funny.

Isolation had made his sense of humor sharp and brittle. Tas had seen nothing since the Rose Syndicate blinded him. Frelinray would have laughed, though.

Frelinray, always wanting to be called Ray. What an ugly, human-sounding name.

Remorse and fury and a long-buried desire for companionship swirled inside him. Both held captive by the Rose Syndicate, the chance to escape arose when the Germans firebombed the building. As dumb luck had it, the blast collapsed a wall and freed Ray from his chains.

Tas had not been so fortunate; his chains remained firmly in place and he urged his friend to flee, to seize that chance. Frelinray did so with reluctance, escaping minutes before a devastating barrage.

Tas barely had time to shift to his stone form as the walls of the building crumbled and flames surrounded him. He would not have been surprised to learn Frelinray perished in the bombing, but Tas hoped. And waited.

Eventually, the rubble shifted. His captors brought him to a new prison, underground and far away from the blitz. He always hoped Frelinray would come back for him, though—not to abandon him for nearly eighty years.

If Tas ever meet Frelinray again, he’d punch him in the face. First, for insisting on a dumb, human-sounding name. Second, for leaving Tas to rot in captivity for eighty gracking years.

Perhaps Frelinray had not escaped. In the chaos of the bombing blitz, he could have easily been struck down again.

Tas stayed in duramna, his stone form, for decades, drifting along in a half-awake state. The Rose Syndicate eventually dug him out. They moved him from facility to facility, but the view never changed: always a flat concrete wall.

Duramna was strange. The first level allowed a warrior increased strength and resistance. The deeper levels resembled hibernation, allowing his body to heal rapidly, and kept pain at a distance, easily ignored. His body, desperate to replace the energy expended in shifting, would burn off excess fat and eventually muscle mass if he did not find sustenance. Perhaps it was different for those in the warrior class. Tas gathered information as a scout, and his stone form always remained aware, even if in a dream-like state.

Over the years, they tested his stone form, applying diamond-tipped drills and acid to see how much damage he could take before waking. They scratched and scored his eyes. They shattered his right foot. What finally stirred him was when they snapped his wings.

When he awoke, the accumulated pain of years of torment came crashing down: his eyes, his foot, the chemical burns, the drilling, the chipping away, and finally the bones snapping in his wings.

He roared in agony and grabbed the nearest human by the throat.

The male was never the same.

Now they purposely kept him starved and weak. He could not shift to his stone form and slip into a trance, and his body lacked the nutrients to heal properly. It took every ounce of energy to just to maintain whatever kind of life this was.

Time became meaningless. After the crash that stranded him on this primitive mudball of a planet, he’d overheard the general, Zaek, mutter to himself about time dilation. Time flowed differently back home on Duras because of gravity or something. Tas hadn’t paid attention, being more concerned with helping the injured, but he had centuries to ponder Zaek’s meaning.

If time did move slower on Duras, that meant the surviving crew could wait years—centuries—for a rescue. It also meant that Tas’ parents, brother and little sister remained unchanged. They were fixed points. They did not age and they did not know of the disaster that befell Tas’ ship, leaving him stranded and so many dead. Perhaps enough time had passed that they wondered, but their home planet was at war and Tas served in the military. Periods of silence were to be expected. They did not know how he barely survived, and it comforted him.

His time in captivity was insignificant. He grew older, but his family remained the same. Days bled into one another, blurring, and he could suffer the never ending torture because what was one point in time?

Nothing.

His sigil had pinged him. Rescue was coming at long last.

Tas had nothing but time to turn that information over. The hours stretched into days. He had no way to judge the time in his crate, sleeping when he wanted and ignoring his hunger.

Blinded, starved and chained, his captors made a mistake. They left him alone too long. He’d show them exactly how much of a threat he could be.

As thin as he was, he could slip out of the manacles on his wrist and work his feet free. He had located the weak spots in the crate and could use the last of his strength to smash it open.

He waited.

He’d suffer the indignity of captivity for a little longer, until they reached land. Then he’d shed his chains and snap the neck of the first human he encountered.

2

Juniper

J uniper, come to my office when you get a second.

Sure, boss. Let me finish this up. Juniper made the rounds past her tables, topping off coffee cups with a smile. The smiles didn’t guarantee a good tip, but they sure didn’t hurt. Enticed by the rich aroma drifting up from her carafe, she realized she could use a fresh cup of her own. The morning shift never bothered her, but she’d started to drag after the lunch rush.

She grabbed two cups, one for herself and one for Jack, and loaded up both with cream and sugar. What’s up? she asked, setting the cup on his desk.

He accepted the coffee with a nod. Get the van gassed up. Got a catering job for you. A set of keys landed on the desk.

Now? Chloe gets out of school in an hour.

In and out, Junie. I’ll give Chloe a slice of pie while she waits.

Juniper frowned and sipped her coffee. Her kid sister, Chloe, came to the diner every day after school and did homework until Juniper finished her shift. Did it matter if she delivered catering or wove her way through tables?

You’ll keep an eye on her? she asked.

Chloe’s a good kid. No one will mess with her, he said.

Juniper believed Jack. Staff wouldn’t mess with a fourteen-year-old girl on her own, and Jack’s hulking presence would keep away any diners who might take advantage. Far from the fanciest or the best neighborhood, the diner took the idea of family seriously. After slinging six years of coffee and blue plate specials, Juniper was family.

Thanks. She finished the cup, already feeling the surge of caffeine and sugar in her blood.

Waitressing was hardly her dream career, but shit happened.

Twelve years her junior, Chloe never felt like a little sister. She was the surprise baby who came along just when Juniper became old enough to babysit. Juniper’s own teenage rebellion only put distance between them. By the time she went off to college, the sisters barely knew each other. Sure, Chloe sometimes stayed the weekend at Juniper’s apartment and they watched movies and ordered pizza, but to her, that still qualified as babysitting.

They argued and were far from perfect, but they were family. Juniper never doubted that she was loved fiercely.

Then shit happened.

Chloe stayed with Juniper for movies and pizza on Valentine’s Day, letting their parents have a date night.The next morning, as Juniper drove Chloe back home, she knew something was wrong the moment her car turned onto the block. Firetrucks and an ambulance blocked the street, forcing her to walk the last distance. The air smelled like smoke and bitter, melted plastic.

The events were a jumbled mess in her mind. She remembered waiting on the neighbor’s tiny scrap of lawn as the fire department worked, calling her mom’s cell phone and getting the voicemail. Someone asked her if anyone had been inside and she didn’t know, she didn’t want to know but her mother wasn’t answering the phone. She remembered the bodies covered in white sheets and being asked to identify her parents. Chloe clung to her the entire time.

The firefighters had found her parents in their bed, seemingly asleep, presumably dead from smoke inhalation. At least they never knew what happened.

And that was how twenty-year-old Juniper became the guardian for her eight-year-old sister.

The work van rattled to life. She hated making deliveries. The diner’s catering was nothing special, just a batch of day-old bagels, a box of pastries, and to-go containers of coffee. A mediocre bakery supplied the bagels every morning and they were terrible, even under an inch-thick layer of cream cheese. The pastries were made in-house and worth the effort. The cinnamon rolls were ooey-gooey bites of perfection and her absolute favorite. She gained five pounds just from the smell alone.

Juniper rolled her eyes at herself, like a few extra pounds were the extent of her worries. She should be so lucky.

After the fire, she had to grow up real fucking fast. She finished the semester but only because her rent had been prepaid and they needed a place to stay until the homeowner's insurance repaired their parents’ house—legally her house now.

Per state law, a minor child needed their own bed and could not share a bedroom with an adult. As Juniper only shared a two-bedroom apartment with her roommate, she convinced the social worker that her roommate, Kim, was her girlfriend and Chloe lived in the other bedroom. Juniper slept on the couch. Kim didn’t like it, but she couldn’t complain about the inconvenience of having a recently orphaned child in the apartment without seeming like a stone-cold bitch.

After withdrawing from school and moving back into the house, Juniper found a job waitressing in the neighborhood. It wasn’t the best part of town, but it wasn’t the worst. It was home, which was the most important thing. People knew the Bouvet sisters and looked out for them.

So what if her boss, Mick, owned a few local strip clubs and bars? And if those clients came ’round the diner at 3 a.m. for a very late dinner or aggressively early breakfast? Big deal. She made decent money working the morning and lunch shifts, and no one expected her to take her clothes off.

The van complained and the engine sputtered but she eased it onto I-95. Getting the vehicle up to speed always made her nervous. It ran like a workhorse, never failing, but it was not a racehorse, either. Normally she took surface streets to avoid the frustrated honks of other drivers, but she had no time today. She’d get down to Packer Avenue and to the dockyard fast, unload her delivery of crummy bagels and cold coffee, and look the other way if someone slipped something into the back of the van.

Not her problem. She was just the driver.

Old Louis Lancer ran his business just close enough to the legal side of the law that the cops and public officials looked the other way. One of the legendary colorful characters of Philadelphia, he always had a cigar clenched between his teeth and a pretty thing on his arm. He drank, smoked, and ate a fatty diet much to the dismay of his